


But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise

by BoxOnTheNile



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fareeha needs a hug and some goddamn respect, Fareeha's dad is a good dad, Is it a rarepair if there's three of them?, M/M, Multi, Pharah centric, Rarepoly?, Rocket Bird Mom is Bi, Unrequited pharmercy, rarepair
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 21:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11067951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxOnTheNile/pseuds/BoxOnTheNile
Summary: Fareeha Amari is not a child anymore, and she is not her mother.





	But Still, Like Air, I'll Rise

**Author's Note:**

> Like always, this is the fault of the Overwatch Writers Guild, but mostly Iris. Fuck you, Iris, you goddamn enabler. 
> 
> It was a joke. Noir got a smut prompt for it and I saw it and remembered the pharah/roadhog brotp in Speak Gently and _Iris encouraged me_ and now here we are. 
> 
> I'm already bracing for people to freak out bc, idk, lesbophobia since there's no pharmercy, so I'm gonna say this now: I. Don't. Care. I like pharmercy, but it's not in this fic. Partly for angst purposes, mostly because WHAT'S THE MAIN FUCKIN SHIP HERE?
> 
> Anyway, this OT3 is consuming my life, have this.

Sometimes, Fareeha forgets she ever distrusted the two of them. This is one of those times. 

She’s running standard maintenance on her _Raptora_ when Junkrat- Jamie- sidles over to poke at the helmet. She knows he knows how important the armor is, so she’s not worried, and keeps up with diagnostics.

He picks it up after a moment and pops it on his head. It’s not fitted for him, at all, and the golden cowl slips down until the pointed 'beak' nearly strikes his chest.

"...how th' fuck do you _see_ in this thing, Ree?"

She breaks into giggles (she’s twenty-nine, for god’s sake, not fourteen), and Jamie’s voice joins her, and it escalates until Fareeha is laughing so hard she can’t breathe. Jamie pulls the helmet off and grins at her in a way that means he’s indulge in the wonder of a partner that can have multiple orgasms as soon as they’re in the privacy of their room.  
~

But before she ever came to love Jamison Fawkes and Mako Rutledge, she loved Angela Ziegler. She fancied the woman as angelic as her name, as beautiful as the Valkyries her suit was meant to mimic. 

Jesse rolls his eyes as Fareeha tells him this, both of them drunk in the rec room at one a.m. “Then talk to her?”

“She's gay, you know,” Genji pipes up from the corner where he's learning some American card game from Jack. “I had to learn that the hard way.” Jack lays down a card that wins him the game, if the way Genji throws his hand at the ex-commander’s face is any indication. 

“I would rather die?” Fareeha answers him. “Like, honest to god, I would prefer one of my rockets misfire and kill me.”

“That's a little dramatic, kiddo,” Jack says, reshuffling the cards and dealing Genji back in. “What would I tell your mother?”

“Not a kid, and also fuck _Ummi_. She faked her death and ran off.”

“And that's enough for you.” Jesse tries to take the bottle from her hand, but Fareeha leans back and pushes him away with her foot. She's a grown woman, she knows her limits. 

She gulps down the rest of her beer out of spite and hands him the empty bottle. “Now it's enough. And now I'm going to bed, because the hangover I'll have tomorrow will be legendary, and I need to be a legend.”

On her way back to her room, she trips, barrels around a corner to try and keep from falling, and slams right into something large and warm.

Roadhog wraps an arm around her waist to support her, and for a moment her face is pressing against his sternum. There's snickering nearby, and Fareeha’s drunken brain takes a second to place it as Junkrat.  
“You're drunk,” Roadhog rumbles, and it vibrates into her bones. 

“Incredibly so,” she agrees. 

“C’mon, sheila.” Junkrat takes her arm, prosthetic hand shockingly cool compared to Roadhog’s warmth. “Let's find your room.” Fareeha feels herself shifted until she's leaning against Junkrat’s skinny frame. Without the the hunch caused by his explosive tire thing, he's taller than her, and supports her weight easily. She knows she's not light- she's mostly muscle, with her father's dense bone structure. 

“I can get home myself,” she insists. “‘M not a child.”

“Course not, Amari,” Roadhog grunts, but he doesn't sound patronizing, “but you still need a hand now and then.”

“Fareeha,” she corrects. “Amari is my mother. I'm Fareeha, or Pharah on missions.” 

The Junkers escort her straight to her room, Roadhog typing in her passcode as she slurs it for him. 

When she wakes the next morning, still in her athletic pants and t-shirt, there's a glass of water next to her bed, a pachimari by her pillow, and a note with only a familiar smiley face drawn on it.  
~

Angela turns her down. 

Fareeha spends weeks gathering the courage to ask her out, but Angela just shifts awkwardly and admits that in her head, Fareeha is still fourteen and innocent, and that, _that_ hurts more than the rejection. 

Because it isn't “I don't feel the same,” it’s “you're a child,” and it leaves a dark tangle of hurt and anger roiling in her chest until she wants to scream. She doesn't dare, though, she doesn't need to reinforce the others’ idea that she never grew up.

She makes her way to the training room, hoping to loosen the furious knot in her gut by blowing up a hard-light target or six. She launches rocket after holographic rocket until she gets fed up, blasts into the air, and empties the flare reserves of her training armor.

Once she lands, she drops to her hands and knees and sobs.

Because it's not just Angela. Every old member of Overwatch can't see her as anything more than her mother's daughter, the adolescent in Ana Amari’s shadow. Ten years of military experience can't measure up to memories of hide and seek.

She hates it, and she hates herself, because she wants leave, go home to Cairo and Helix and the respect of her squad. 

She's sobbing hard enough she barely notices the session end, hard-light armor dissolving so her bare knees press against the cold floor. She does, however, recognize the uneven footsteps approaching.

“Ree?” Junkrat asks, his nickname for her slightly panicked. “Ree, are ya hurt, should I go find Mercy?”

“No,” she shouts. She shifts to scrub at her face, pulls herself together. Her next words are softer. “I'm fine, thank you.”

“That didn't look like fine, Fareeha.”

Roadhog is offering her a hand up, and she takes it, sniffling. Their friendship is still new, a shaky thing built after Fareeha’s drunken escapades last month, but gods does she need a friend or two right now. She's barely on her feet before the tears start again, and it's so stupid.

“I don't want to be here,” she whispers, and tastes salt. “I'll never be good enough.”

“The fuck do you mean?” Junkrat asks. “You're the best! With your rockets and jetpack and _pcow_ ” He mimicks her firing a concussive blast.

“Doesn't matter. They see me as a child. And it shouldn't matter!” Anger flares again in her chest. “I'm doing good here, helping people I never could have with Helix! How the other see me doesn't matter. How Angela sees me doesn't matter.”

“You confessed.” Roadhog isn't asking a question. 

“I confessed. I can handle rejection. I've been rejected before! But I wasn't an adult to her.” She sighs. “My mother was second in command of Overwatch. I grew up here, in these halls, around these people. But I didn't stop growing because they left. I'm almost thirty, but _Hana_ gets more respect than me.”

She's actually surprised by gentle way Junkrat wipes tears from her face. “They're not worth wastin’ water over,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Wanna go throw rocks at the archer from the roof?”

It's a ridiculous suggestion, asinine and _childish_ in a way she hasn't been since she left Egypt, and she laughs weakly. “Yeah, okay.”


End file.
